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The 100 Greatest Stan Lee Stories Ever Told: #80-71

Earlier this month, Stan Lee passed away at the age of 95. Lee was likely the most famous comic book creator in the history of the medium and he was the Editor-in-Chief for Marvel Comics for a remarkable three decades stint from the Golden Age through the launch of the Marvel Age of Comics. Working with iconic creators like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, Joe Maneely, John Buscema, Don Heck, Wallace Wood, Dick Ayers, Gene Colan and many more, Lee either co-plotted and scripted or simply scripted some of the most famous stories in the history of comics. We asked you to vote for your picks for the top comic book stories that Lee either scripted or co-plotted and scripted. Here are the results!

80. "The Jester Saga" Daredevil #42-46 (1968)

This storyline by Stan Lee and Gene Colan (with inks by Dan Adkins, Vince Colletta and George Klein) introduced the villainous Jester, a guy who came up with an ingenious plot to use against Daredevil - he would frame Daredevil for his own murder!

The Jester then sets himself up as the hero of the story by promising the people of New York City that he will bring the "murderer" to justice. So begins an intricate game of cat and mouse between the Jester and Daredevil. Really intense, thrilling stuff - a lot of intrigue, like the two of them riding on the same subway car, not knowing that the other one is on the car for a while.

In the middle of the storyline, Daredevil is exposed to some radiation that drives him a bit nuts and he fights Captain America.

It is a cool fight, but it really isn't tied to the overall story, as the radiation fades away and Daredevil goes back to normal.

79. "The Abomination!" Tales to Astonish #90-91 (1967)

During the 1960s, there generally was not a whole lot of intermingling of comic book artists between DC and Marvel. Obviously, there was plenty of overlap at the margins (although the DC artists would typically hide their names while working at Marvel, like Mike Esposito would ink books using the name Micky DeMeo and George Roussos would use the name George Bell), but the star artists typcially stayed at one company or another. Gene Colan was one of the first to make the move to Marvel during the Marvel Age and even there, he used the name Adam Austin at first at Marvel (as if anyone could disguise a page drawn by Gene Colan. His layouts are famous for their unique designs). Things changed when Gil Kane, one of DC's top artists, began to work for Marvel while still continuing to draw Green Lantern for DC Comics.

Kane began drawing the Hulk feature in Tales to Astonish with #88. Two issues later, he and Lee introduced the Abomination, he first Hulk villain who could shockingly defeat the Hulk in hand to hand combat!

This was quite a shocking story at the time.

78. "The Coming of Loki" Journey Into Mystery #112-113 (1964)

Very soon into the development of the "Tales of Asgard" back-ups in Thor, Stan Lee realized that these were the types of stories that Jack Kirby was really interested in doing and it is fascinating to see the evolution of the Thor title as it adapted the main stories to match the back-ups. One of the interesting ways that Lee and Kirby used the "Tales of Asgard" back-ups early on was to give us character background on the major characters in the feature. These classic stories (by Kirby, Lee and Vince Colletta) showed how Odin came to adopt baby Loki and how young Loki first decided to embrace being a villain...

Look how much character development Kirby and Lee packed into just four pages there!